---
title: Apple Ads audience settings — customer types, demographics, location and ad scheduling
slug: apple-ads-audience-targeting-pitfalls
summary: What Apple Ads audience options actually do — "new users" vs the ambiguous "returning users", why age/gender targeting reaches only users with personalised ads on (Thomas Petit estimated ~5% effective reach in 2023), when location targeting and ad scheduling to fill organic-rank dips make sense, and where practitioners disagree.
domain: mobile-apps
tags: [user-acquisition, apple-ads, targeting, demographics, audience, campaign-setup]
related: [apple-ads-max-conversion-campaign, apple-ads-single-keyword-ad-groups, apple-ads-match-types-and-search-terms, apple-ads-campaign-structure, high-rpd-country-bundles-for-app-ads]
sources: [yt:EYfeV7fkCeI, yt:W6_bN3AZo_s]
updated: 2026-10-24
---

# Apple Ads audience settings

## TL;DR
- **Customer type:** choose **New users** to stretch budget. "All users" is for big brands buying recognition. "Users of my other apps" needs ~5,000 users in the group (Ariel Michaeli).[^1]
- **"Returning users" is ambiguous.** Apple's docs include people who deleted the app, people who have it on another device, and possibly people who still have it. You pay for taps that can't become new downloads.[^2][^3]
- Even with "new users only", Thomas Petit still got a fair number of returning-user downloads. Since AdServices (~2021) he stopped splitting new and returning users.[^4]
- **Demographics apply only to users with personalised ads on.** Petit estimated ~80% have them off. Add gender and OS-version limits and a gender-targeted CPP reached about **5%** of people.[^5]
- **Location** (city/state) suits local or rolling-launch apps, e.g. food delivery that started in New York and Boston.[^6]
- **Ad scheduling** can fill hours when your organic rank dips, for apps with strong hour-of-day patterns (business, utilities). Ariel calls it a "tinkery" tactic.[^7]

## Details
**Ariel's narrow-first setup (Jan 2025, Appfigures app).**[^8][^6][^9]
1. Advanced (not Basic), Search Results, **one country per campaign**. He used to bundle same-language countries but found UK keywords competing in the US.
2. Budget: think monthly. Daily × 30 is your real spend ($10/day ≈ $300/month); set it from what you want to spend, not from competitors.
3. No end date unless the campaign is time-bound. Ending isn't optimising.
4. One ad group, max CPT $1, search match off, exact keywords, negatives (see [[apple-ads-match-types-and-search-terms]]).
5. Audience: specific, new users, and narrow demographics you can justify. For Appfigures he excludes very young ages ("people thinking about their app as a business"). News apps might target older users.
6. Default product page creatives at first. Track spend vs downloads per keyword over time.

**Why Petit avoids personalisation.** It doesn't work for users who turned personalised ads off (~80% in 2023) or who run iOS older than 15.2. Each filter compounds, the CPP barely serves, and you may not know why.[^5]

## Disagreements / caveats
- **Demographic targeting: yes or no?** Ariel narrows age/gender first and broadens later. Steve P. Young (June 2026) says leave demographics blank because it throttles impressions ([[apple-ads-max-conversion-campaign]]). Petit's reach math sides with Steve. Use demographics only if you accept a much smaller, non-representative audience.
- Apple's privacy defaults and the returning-user definition may have changed since 2023/2025. Re-check the current docs.
- Ariel's advice comes from a B2B analytics app on modest budgets; consumer apps usually need more reach.

## See also
- [[apple-ads-max-conversion-campaign]] — Steve's settings
- [[high-rpd-country-bundles-for-app-ads]] — which countries
- [[people/thomas-petit]], [[people/ariel-michaeli]]

[^1]: yt:W6_bN3AZo_s @ 09:01 — Ariel Michaeli
[^2]: yt:W6_bN3AZo_s @ 09:48 — Ariel Michaeli
[^3]: yt:EYfeV7fkCeI @ 15:28 — Thomas Petit
[^4]: yt:EYfeV7fkCeI @ 16:18 — Thomas Petit
[^5]: yt:EYfeV7fkCeI @ 14:41 — Thomas Petit
[^6]: yt:W6_bN3AZo_s @ 12:23 — Ariel Michaeli
[^7]: yt:W6_bN3AZo_s @ 13:15 — Ariel Michaeli
[^8]: yt:W6_bN3AZo_s @ 00:48 — Ariel Michaeli
[^9]: yt:W6_bN3AZo_s @ 01:34 — Ariel Michaeli